Climate Curveball: Senate Bill Taps Negative Mood Toward Wall Street

As if the debate over climate legislation in the Senate weren’t complicated enough, here’s a new twist: Sens. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) today introduced their own bill to cut emissions – one that’s a lot simpler to explain to voters than proposals that have advanced so far in Congress. It also plays off the anti-Wall Street mood that’s popular among members of both parties these days.

The question is whether the latest bill will be any easier to pass.

Like the other bills, the senators’ proposed “Carbon Limits and Energy for American Renewal Act” would require companies to hold government-issued permits in order to emit greenhouse gases. Over time, the government would issue fewer permits, bringing emissions down.

But unlike those other bills, the Cantwell-Collins measure would give the vast majority of revenues raised under such a system -– 75% — back to consumers each month in the form of checks. In other words, there’d be no free permits for electric utilities, steel makers and …